Bad science and corrupt bureaucrats turned a beautiful migratory songbird that nests only in Texas into a 1990s terror that good science and concerned citizens are now fighting to exonerate.

The songbird is the golden-cheeked warbler and the fear it instills comes from its status as an endangered species protected by a bureaucracy that confiscates property, bankrupts businesses and imprisons decent people – and we now know that the warbler was never endangered at all.